Artificial stone contrasted with natural stone means artificially manufactured stone. The artificial stone such as artificial marble and artificial granite is used as a structural exterior or interior material.
The most representative artificial stone is cementitious artificial stone. The cementitious artificial stone is manufactured with a low price and typically used as a structrual interior material.
FIG. 1 shows a process of manufacturing a conventional cementitious artificial stone. As shown in FIG. 1, the conventional cementitious artificial stone is manufactured through a step S11 of preparing artificial-stone paste including white cement or block cement, broken-stone chips, calcium carbonate or silica stone powder, water-reducing agent, pigment, water and the like, a step S12 of injecting the prepared artificial-stone paste in a mold, a vacuum molding step S13, a vacuum and vibration molding step S14, and a step S15 of steam-curing the molded artificial-stone paste. The cured artificial-stone paste is separated from the mold and then treated by polishing and surface machining. Thus, the artificial stone is completed.
The cementitious artificial stone contains ground granite stone or other broken-stone chip, or a small amount of mirror or glass chip in order to express its appearance. However, it is difficult to get out of terrazzo texture and thus to provide the appearance of exclusive engineering stone.
In order to provide the beautiful appearance of the cementitious artificial stone, it is necessary to use quartz. However, in case of using quartz, the quartz may be separated from the artificial stone due to its high strength. Further, if a particle size of the quartz is set to 4 mm or less in order to solve the quartz separation problem, a strength of the artificial stone is lowered, and fine cracks are formed in the artificial stone, and the quartz separation problem is not solved completely. As a result, it is impossible to use the quartz having a particle size of 2.5 mm or less in order to express the appearance of the cementitious artificial stone.